The six weeks of the holiday season can be especially challenging for people in prison. There are more suicide attempts and many more people go to seg (solitary confinement) – getting into trouble and reacting to people and life around them. Some are on suicide watch.

Some weeks ago, on a boiling hot Wednesday evening, I was leading one of our groups in the men’s prison. One participant, JH, was getting really restless and agitated as the room was pretty toasty. To be fair it was bloody hot. 28 men in a room with no air conditioning and 95 degrees outside… so he did have a point. But it’s just heat. No one was going to die. And no one else was making a fuss. He was behaving like the sweat dripping down his front was out to attack him. He kept saying how uncomfortable he felt.

SA has been in prison for 3 years. She had many hard knocks in her life. She was an addict and struggling with life on the streets, getting into bad relationships and getting into trouble. From SA’s stories, she is prone to trouble in prison too and often found herself in solitary.

Not anymore. Her mind is quieting down and she realizes she’s been looking in the wrong direction for her wellbeing. She sees that her wellbeing doesn’t come from drugs, winning fights or arguing with the world. She has started to see that when she doesn’t take all the negative thinking and feeling as more than a passing storm, her wellbeing naturally bubbles to the surface.

On Thursday in the medium security women’s prison, one of our participants said, “I have a letter I wrote to you. Can I read it?”. Of course I said yes. It’s one of the most beautiful letters I’ve ever received. It was quite long so I’m sharing the highlights.

My name is Jessica and I was as broken as they come. And the 3 Principles of the Mind helped to give me my life back even locked away in prison.

I met ZM early on in one of my first groups at Columbia River Correctional. A lovely man who had been in and out of prison for the past two plus decades. He couldn’t stay long in our group as he was transferred to another prison and I didn’t see him for some time. He suffered with so much grief you could almost see it weighing him down. His son had passed away 20 years ago under tragic circumstances. Although I never asked exactly him what happened, I knew he felt a tremendous amount of guilt and lived in a palpable sadness.

I recently started working in the women’s medium security prison here in Oregon. People ask me is there any difference between the men and the women. Not that I can see. We all have a core of wisdom and innate resilience no matter who we are.